Excellence in Online Journalism

Exploring Current Practices in an Evolving Environment

David A. Craig

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781412970099
• eBook ISBN: 9781452236810
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Like the technologies that support it, the craft of online journalism is evolving quickly. This timely book helps students develop standards of excellence, through interviews with more than 30 writers, editors and producers, and dozens of examples of strong work. The author provides a framework of concepts to show how the field is evolving and challenged by competition, staffing limitations, and other pressures. Discussion is organized around four key elements: speed and accuracy with depth in breaking news; comprehensiveness in multimedia content; open-endedness in story development, including public contributions; and conversation with users. Chapter-length treatments of these topics bring home the realities of online work to students, who also come to appreciate how excellence and ethics online go hand in hand.

1

Excellence Online

A Work in Progress

Journalists take a beating every day for their ethics and their competence. Bloggers on the left and right criticize decisions by mainstream media outlets. Critics on radio and television call into question the fairness of news coverage. Much of the public deeply doubts the trustworthiness of reporters and editors (Kohut et al., 2009).

While bad news and opinions about journalists spread rapidly, good journalists at hundreds of large and small news organizations strive for excellence in the face of growing financial pressures and often shrinking resources.

This chapter will:

• Show how excellence is an important but shifting concept in journalism.
• Introduce four elements of excellence in online journalism based on interviews with journalists. These four elements will be the focus of discussion of online journalists’ work in the next several chapters.

EXCELLENCE IN OLD AND NEW MEDIA

It has never been easy to do excellent journalism, but news people and news organizations have been thinking about excellence for a long time. From the early 20th century, the professionalization of journalism brought increasing attention to the value of high standards of quality. The founding of journalism schools such as the University of Missouri highlighted an interest in training future journalists to pursue their craft with greater skill and understanding. The creation of journalism professional organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists and Women in Communications in 1909 (Gallagher, 1998) started drawing together journalists with an interest in increasing the quality of work in the field. Numerous journalism organizations articulated standards through codes of ethics—among them, in the 1920s, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the SPJ (Ferré, 1998). A number of publications critically reviewing journalism appeared in the mid-20th century, including Nieman Reports in 1947 and Columbia Journalism Review in 1961, and continued in later decades to raise important questions about practices in the field (Bertrand, 1998).

The nature of excellence in journalism is evolving with the development of online journalism. In 2004, looking back at previous research about journalism quality, sociologist and newspaper researcher Leo Bogart wrote:

American editors and journalists share a fairly broad consensus on what constitutes excellence in the press. When experienced news people are asked what makes for quality, a number of words and phrases inevitably surface: integrity, fairness, balance, accuracy, comprehensiveness, diligence in discovery, authority, breadth of coverage, variety of content, reflection of the entire home community, vivid writing, attractive makeup, packaging or appearance, and easy navigability. In the American tradition, but not always accepted elsewhere, is the clear differentiation of reporting and opinion. (2004, p. 40)

At the core of journalistic excellence is strong reporting and storytelling, as recognized in the field through a variety of awards. For example, the Pulitzer Prizes, first awarded in 1917, have honored powerful investigative pieces and other in-depth reporting, heart-rending feature stories, and gripping photography (The Pulitzer Prizes, n.d.). Other awards such as the Edward R. Murrow Awards of the Radio Television Digital News Association recognize news and feature reporting in broadcast journalism (Awards—Edward R. Murrow Awards, n.d.).

Ideas about excellence online have a lot in common with old media, but some shifts are evident. Three journalism researchers developed a list of excellence criteria with new media in mind (Gladney, Shapiro, & Castaldo, 2007). They included many elements common with print excellence such as good writing, appropriate redesign, depth, and community building/service. But other criteria—such as search power, multimedia richness, bandwidth, and user choice/control—were distinctively online elements. Some others such as community dialogue and “hyperlocal” were particularly important online.

As with journalism in general, ideas about excellence in online work are reflected in awards. For example, the Online News Association’s Online Journalism Awards have honored public service, general excellence, breaking news, investigative journalism, multimedia feature presentation, and other categories of work (About the Online Journalism Awards, n.d.). The Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism highlight creative work including citizen-generated journalism (Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, n.d.).

Thinking about excellence in online journalism continues to develop as technology changes and creative journalists experiment with new ways of communicating—and as the public takes a more central place in storytelling and discussion through tools such as social media. The possibilities emerging for online journalism reshape the broader picture of what journalism can look like and what it can do for the public. The next section will lay out four key elements of excellence in online journalism. They are all evolving, but together they represent the core of the definition of excellence in this book.

EXCELLENCE ONLINE: FOUR DEVELOPING STANDARDS

The journalists interviewed for this book all face a steep challenge: trying to understand what excellence means in a medium that is young and evolving quickly. They can look back to the traditions of the old media, which some of them came from, but their work is situated in an environment that is different economically, technologically, and socially. Hal Straus, interactivity and communities editor at washingtonpost.com, pointed back to common ground with the tradition of print journalism:

I don’t think there’s any fundamental difference between excellence in online journalism and excellence in print journalism. You have to be able to present information and commentary on issues that matter to your audience in a thorough and provocative way. The facts have to be right, your opinions have to be well argued and supported, and so there has to be a recognition that most issues have more than one side.

As Straus noted, the tradition of journalism is to provide people reliable information about important public matters, as well as opinions on these topics. Online journalists still strive to do this—the best ones, with great care. But he and other online journalists also point to ways that online excellence looks distinctive and carries its own distinctive challenges.

This section will introduce four elements of excellence that will be the focus of discussion in much of this book: speed and accuracy with depth in breaking news, comprehensiveness in content, open-endedness in story development, and centrality of conversation. (See Table 1.1 for a summary.) These stood out from interviews with writers, editors, and producers. They overlap with issues from old media, but they are particularly important in online journalism and have a distinct character in this medium. Together they provide a framework for thinking more carefully about online excellence.

Table 1.1 Developing Standards of Excellence in Online Journalism

Speed and accuracy with depth in breaking news	Making the most of the Internet’s capacity for speed while taking care to confirm the accuracy of information and disclose exactly what is known, and how, for any information that is not confirmed Providing context and background quickly
Comprehensiveness in content	Using multiple storytelling forms—text, graphics, audio, photos, video—in ways that take greatest advantage of their individual strengths and the sum of the parts
Open-endedness in story development	Developing stories in multiple stages in line with their appropriate life spans, drawing on contributions from the public with both respect and careful judgment
The centrality of conversation	Fostering interaction with and among users through means including distinctive voice and personality, direct address, balancing monitoring and self-direction in discussions, and establishing a wide presence through social media

Speed and Accuracy With Depth in Breaking News: Chapter 3

As a medium, the Internet provides the means to break stories at any time and update news continually. But the best of online journalism balances speed with other considerations such as context and thoroughness. Accuracy remains a top priority.

Jim Roberts, associate managing editor for digital news at NYTimes.com, pointed out the challenge of being fast and holding to a high standard of quality:

To me the toughest thing to doing what I do is balancing the need for speed with the desire to be incredibly accurate, to uphold the long traditions of this news organization and to deliver the kind of quality that people expect from us in print on a minute-to-minute basis.

Online journalists face a tough balancing act with breaking news for multiple reasons including the capacity of the medium, pressures of competition, limitations of resources, complexity of the editing process, and the expectation of the audience that information will be available immediately. These challenges make it difficult to establish an uncompromised standard of excellence in breaking news.

Chapter 3 will explore the balancing act and the challenges and how they have played out through breaking news events including the jet landing in the Hudson River and a rumor that Apple might buy Twitter.

Comprehensiveness in Content: Chapter 4

Online journalism provides the ability to go beyond the text of a story or outside it to give background and present supporting materials. Its capacity for thoroughness and completeness goes beyond what any other single medium can provide. Its multiplicity of forms of presentation allows users to learn in different ways: Breaking news doesn’t always revolve around a written story, and different components can help different types of learners. Robert Hood, supervising producer for multimedia at msnbc.com, offered this perspective:

Here we are at this precious online moment when the story gets to suggest the medium in which it should be told. Visual stories are told with pictures. An interesting narrative can be told with audio and/or video. A process or motion can be explained with information graphics or video. Detail and context can be delivered with text. I think that’s fascinating and we need to get better at exploiting the strengths of each medium.

Th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Excellence Online: A Work in Progress
• Chapter 2: An Ethical Lens for Looking at Excellence
• Chapter 3: Speed and Accuracy With Depth in Breaking News
• Chapter 4: Comprehensiveness in Content
• Chapter 5: Open-Endedness in Story Development
• Chapter 6: The Centrality of Conversation
• Chapter 7: Beyond the Big Guys: Independent and Community Journalism Online
• Chapter 8: The Future of Excellence in Online Journalism: Living in the World of Both-And
• Index
• About the Author